Boarding Establishments have changed a lot since my day. Gone are the days of squeezing onto a tatty sofa and blue plastic chairs huddled around a box-tv with bunny ears watching Bold & the Beautiful on SABC 1. The 50 Shades of Beige common room heaving with girls wondering when Taylor would be rescued by Ridge, occasionally being interrupted by the Grade 8 on “phone duty” shouting for the girl whose parent or current love interest was on the other end of the pay phone. After 2 hours the pay phone was resolutely silent in the cold quarry-tiled entrance hall. Locked in its cage until the next day.
Our tour of Hudson House at Maritzburg College was like going into a very very posh European backpackers. “They have flatscreen TVs and a coffee machine?!” I heard myself gasp jealously. “We never had anything like that…” I scoffed. I felt like one of those campers who says things like “It’s not real camping if you have all the gear… The point is to struggle… To camp.” And then, silently seethe as I see the fancy-campers arrive with blow-up mattresses and camping fridge… With ice.
Stacey and Kyle Emerson want to “Make It Nice” for the Hudson House boys, and they’re really proud, as they should be, of the spaces they’ve created. They’ve created a home out of a house… This resonates with us.
We were asked to create something cool in the inside/outside space, and we were obviously delighted with the size and quality of the wall. Again, I found my eyes scanning the pool tables, foosball tables, and flatscreen TV. We didn’t even have a designated pat-a-cake area. There’s also a barber’s chair so they can cut each other’s hair. Unbelievable.
A montage of all those generational boarding school stories started on an instant shutter effect. Grey food, lumpy custard, cold cavernous spaces, scratchy blankets, toughing it out until holidays, hard margarine, “good old fashioned discipline”. I’m glad someone decided it doesn’t have to be so kak anymore…
So there we were, being asked to create something for the boys… Something cool to make the space feel like theirs.
Jono and I went back to our school days and thought about what we needed and what we wished we’d been told. This made us think about how we could develop our approach to interactive murals… Why not link to YouTube videos, podcast episodes, etc.? Let’s use technology, not fight against it. And thus began our deep dive into advice for boys/men.
We started with Rudyard Kipling’s If because that’s the landmark of traditional masculinity and advice. It would be a very nice bookend and starting point. This led to David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech which we see as a postmodern version of sage advice… That also hinges on empathy. Enter the two goldfish.
After that, in our Jackal & Hide team selection, it was the obvious pick of MJ, a pair of Nikes (everyone needs the right tools… Sorry Reebok fans), and a tiger. We needed to make sure that the imagery we chose has longevity… You don’t want to be picking a contemporary athlete to find out that they’ve done a whoopsie and now you’re stuck with a proverbial Lance Armstrong tattoo. Not that Lance Armstrong is exactly contemporary but you get my point?
We also didn’t want to make the mural too sports-heavy. We selected Dr Andrew Huberman because we believe it’s never too early to learn about human psychology and behaviour, and Huberman came from the skateboarding scene so he’s lank cool even for a fogey. There are a lot of people peddling self-help books that could just be an email or a tweet… But Huberman is an expert and his advice is solid– you can develop good habits through discipline, and you can break bad ones.
As massive podcast fans, we also wanted to spread the joy of listening. Listening, without a screen, should be mandatory for at least an hour a day.
This American Life is a triumph in storytelling, and if the link inspires one person to become obsessed with Ira Glass and his rare and artful ability to weave narratives then that’s a win. What he and his team have done for public radio deserves all the accolades in the world. And anything with the word PUBLIC should be supported.
The cliche, “Knowledge is power” is often neglected. We have so many resources, there’s so much to learn, and there’s so much distracting us from what’s in front of us. There are tempting lazy-easy ways and shortcuts that will inevitably bite us in the future (Yes I’m talking to you AI and Chat GPT)… We hope this mural is a reminder that knowledge is in front of us, if we have the curiosity and discipline to engage, think critically, debate, and discuss.
We hope change inspires growth.
And that everyone brings their game.
Jackal & Hide
You can check out more about the project here
And here are the links to the multimedia content.
This is Water by David Foster Wallace